Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?
- What aspects of a building design are most affected by the terrain features?
Modeling the land features via toposurface informs the building design process and provides insight into limitations with regards to conceptual design, site orientation, environmental impacts, construction compliance and site context. Cost can also play an important role - the more precision in modeling, the less potential waste during construction.
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
Yes, building should adapt to terrain in order to incorporate design features to fit the site characteristics and minimize the amount of excavation of the existing site conditions. From an engineering standpoint, stormwater management is important to minimize disturbance to the natural landscape. Geotechnical soil considerations could also be an important factor in determining construction feasibility. Also, constructability review could play an important role, to ensure that building development on a given terrain is safe to proceed - examples like developments on hillsides or by oceanside.
What considerations affect a project team's decision-making when deciding the floor-to-floor height to use in a multi-story building?
- From a real estate developer's perspective?
- From a designer's perspective?
- From an engineer's perspective?
- From a builder's perspective?
- From an owner's perspective?
What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?
- Can you share an interesting example of a building that doesn’t vertically stack (where the floor plates change their shaped radically between the floor levels)?
- What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?
Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?
- How can building modeling help prevent the mistakes that often occur when designing and installing stairs?
Stairs are important in order to prescribe to safety standards, building code compliance, and to facilitate accessibility, to name a few examples. Modeling helps to reduce errors, simplify installation and provide visualization.